Could a knife or sword be made that could cut iron bars

until you run out of ammunition, and then it becomes a very hot, unwieldy club. :D

Best Regards,

Steven Garsson
 
A club I think we've come to the conclusion of being very capable of blocking the sword, after running out of ammo :)
 
"...when it comes to weaponry, a Japanese sword blade is about the sharpest thing there is. It is designed to cut through tempered steel, and even thick nails don't make an interesting challenge. A lot of historical detail is offered by early observers of swordmaking. For example, in the 1560s, one of the Jesuit fathers visited a particularly militant Buddhist temple, The Monastery of the Original Vow at Ishiyama. He had expected to find the monks armed with swords, but he had not expected the swords themselves to be quite so formidable. They could cut through armor, he reported, “as easily as a sharp knife cuts a tender rump.” Dutchman Arnold Montanus wrote that “Their Faulchions or Scimeters [sic] are so well wrought, and excellently temper'd, that they will cut our European blades asunder, like Flags or Rushes.” George Cameron Stone, a distinguished 20th century arms collector, once took part in a test where an ancient Japanese sword was used to cut a modern European sword in two.

Although the advent of firearms eventually devalued the sword and its usage in military combat, there is actual film footage showing a machine-gun barrel being sliced in half by a sword from the forge of the great 15th century maker, Kanemoto II."

http://www.scene360.com/EDITINGroom_article_fightscenes_02.html

"During World War II, officers of the Japanese Imperial Army, both commissioned and noncommissioned, wore "military swords" (gunto). The sword expert Sekitsugu Naruse toured the Chinese front at the army's request to repair damaged swords.

Naruse tells of a soldier who possessed "a real and true Tadamitsu." The engravings on the sword said it was crafted by Tadamitsu, of Osafune, during the Bunmei era (1469-86), and it surely was made excellently.

Evidently having heard stories such as the one Noel Perrin tells of a Japanese sword slicing a machine gun, the soldier "suddenly cut at an iron plate two inches thick. Of course he created large chips in the blade and brought it to me. What he had to say then was, 'They say the Tadamitsu is a superb sword, but this one was no good. It merely cut an iron plate by one inch, and chipped like this. It also bent. Do you think this is a fake?' "

Naruse, an admirer of the swords of his country, could only sigh: "A master's work died a dog's death." His simple word on the instrument is so common-sensical as to put all of us blind believers to shame: "After all, a sword is neither devised nor designed to cut iron." "

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?eo20031229hs.htm

"Mr.Perrin relates: A Japanese sword blade is about the sharpest thing there is. It is designed to cut through tempered steel, and it can. Tolerably thick nails don't even make an interesting challenge. . . . The distinguished twentieth-century arms collector George Cameron Stone once took part in a test in which a sixteenth-century Japanese sword was used to cut a modern European sword in two. And there exists in Japan right now a film showing a machine-gun barrel being sliced in half by a sword from the forge of the great fifteenth-century maker, Kanemoto."

Giving Up the Gun: Japan's Reversion to the Sword, 1543-1879 by
Noel Perrin

maximus otter
 
Max, the Japantimes is about as good as the Sunday Sport for bias, propoganda and pure rubbish. Its an 'Expletive' joke the stories they run in that rag.

Top and bottom, no matter how sharp the thing is its not possible to move it fast enough to cut through anything but thin cheap steel.
 
Noel Perrin's stuff has often been called into question, by people on both sides of the "samurai sword" fence. One need only read part of his account: "something like 4 million layers of finely forged steel" to know that he's full of it.

As for the movie scene site, I would be wary of an author who refers to the Heian period, a rather important one for Japanese swords, as the "Keian" period. As for the "common knowledge" part - those two words rarely work well together.

I can certainly believe that a sword, when swung with power and proper form, will go through an inch of iron plate. Note however that the sword was utterly destroyed by this act, as Naruse's statement says.

Here's a good site to wash away Perrin's sword drivel (Not being a historian or a history buff, I can't speak towards his other avenues of research): http://www.swordhistory.com/excerpts/ancient.html

It's also a great perspective from the Western side of things.

In addition to the above, it's been tried by modern smiths. Al Massey and Randal Graham, no less. With modern steel blades rigged up to make them as resistant as possible to brittle failure. End result: minor damage to the blade, minor damage to the barrel. With historically accurate swords you'd have been lucky not to snap the blade in two. Keep in mind that historical Nihonto weren't generally tempered or stress relieved - the edge was very hard, and correspondingly brittle. At the least you'd run the risk of doing something like that. And no one in their right mind would try that with a sword carrying historical value, like that Kanemoto. It was most likely a rigged propaganda film, with a wooden gun barrel. Technique may transcend the limitations of a weapon, but it can't transcend physics.

(Edit regarding the iron plate: I'm assuming he would have swung at a corner of the plate, since I can't see anyone swinging wildly at the face of an iron plate. I'm also assuming the iron plate was quite soft - relatively speaking, of course. Those two assumptions bring one inch of penetration into the realm of possibility for me.)
 
After all the joking, a serious thread emeged... and I learned new things. Thanks all.
 
Here is another practical way to think about the question: Can you drill through an iron bar or even a gun barrel? Of course. But a drill bit is just a modified knife or sword. So, again, we see that the idea that a knife or sword could cut thorugh an iron bar is not unconceivable.
 
put forward by anyone, let alone you!

A gun barrel could not be drilled through with HSS or even cobalt. Tungsten carbide would be called for, at a very slow feed rate. If you made a sword of tungsten carbide, it would shatter the first time you used it to cut anything harder than bone.

Really, how did your statement about using a drill add value to the discussion?

Best Regards,

STeven Garsson
 
Kohai999 said:
put forward by anyone, let alone you!

A gun barrel could not be drilled through with HSS or even cobalt. Tungsten carbide would be called for, at a very slow feed rate. If you made a sword of tungsten carbide, it would shatter the first time you used it to cut anything harder than bone.

Really, how did your statement about using a drill add value to the discussion?

Best Regards,

STeven Garsson
Click to expand...

Sorry.

What I'm trying to say is that common-sense and every-day experience tells us that it is not inconceivable for some sort of edged impliment to cut through an iron bar or even a gun barrel. It's not out of the question.

Once you use common-sense and every-day experience to get past the initial, knee-jerk reaction of "no way!," you can start to think about the problem and ask what practicalities would have to be satisfied in order for a sword to cut an iron bar.

It's a perspective-change. Instead of thinking about what's impossible, think about what is possible and go from there. Instead of trying to prove that it's impossible, try and think about how it might be possible. Think this way and you'll be filing your first patent before you know what happened.
 
I do understand your method of looking at the problem.

In manner of this process, is how Howard Clark came up with the L-6 Bainite katana. Lighter, and faster, but remains virtually unbreakable.

I must say however, that encouraging this train of thought requires that the participants have more than a working knowledge of what has been done before, so that they can move forward in new thinking.

Best Regards,

STeven Garsson
 
knife saber said:
Noel Perrin's stuff has often been called into question, by people on both sides of the "samurai sword" fence. One need only read part of his account: "something like 4 million layers of finely forged steel" to know that he's full of it.

As for the movie scene site, I would be wary of an author who refers to the Heian period, a rather important one for Japanese swords, as the "Keian" period. As for the "common knowledge" part - those two words rarely work well together.
Click to expand...

Well, that isn't too hard to believe... if you fold the steel 22 times you end up with 4,194,304 layers. (two to the power of the number of folds). I'm not aware that the Heian era was all that important for swords... sure, new styles developed and all that, but, aside from a few minor revolts there it wasn't a big era for the military (and a lot of the military/police posts were purely ceremonial so there would be a need for ornamental swords), so they didn't really start trying to refine the nihonto as weapon until the Kamakura era (1192 - 1333) when the country was reduced to civil war between rival clans (and then, the swords were battle swords without the fine polish and aesthetic refinements of the later Shinto era (1597-1780) swords, which were produced in a time of relative peace when people had the time to appreciate a sword as a work of art and carry them as status symbols)
 
It's certainly possible that steel could be folded 22 times. I've heard that up to 24 folds would historically be done - but only as a necessary step in purifying a relatively impure tamahagane billet. Most high quality blades would require significantly fewer folds to make the billet clean and homogeneous. That would also preserve the carbon content of the billet - 24 folds would burn a lot of carbon off.

As for the Heian period - well, it holds the start of the Koto sword period, as well as the birth of the curved tachi, the rise of forging techniques involving core and skin steels, as well as the earliest usages of the shinogi zukuri blade geometry.

Historically speaking, I concede everything to you. I still consider the Heian era to contain important events in the birth of the nihonto as we know it. That I jumped on the misspelling of "Heian" in the movie scene website was simply irritation at Perrin and others who insist on believing the myth of the invincible katana.

(BTW: thanks for reading my post. I was afraid I was ranting)
 
Ok! What do you think guys? Can sword cut women's the softest and the lightest flying scarf?
 
knife saber said:
It's certainly possible that steel could be folded 22 times. I've heard that up to 24 folds would historically be done - but only as a necessary step in purifying a relatively impure tamahagane billet. Most high quality blades would require significantly fewer folds to make the billet clean and homogeneous. That would also preserve the carbon content of the billet - 24 folds would burn a lot of carbon off.

As for the Heian period - well, it holds the start of the Koto sword period, as well as the birth of the curved tachi, the rise of forging techniques involving core and skin steels, as well as the earliest usages of the shinogi zukuri blade geometry.

Historically speaking, I concede everything to you. I still consider the Heian era to contain important events in the birth of the nihonto as we know it. That I jumped on the misspelling of "Heian" in the movie scene website was simply irritation at Perrin and others who insist on believing the myth of the invincible katana.

(BTW: thanks for reading my post. I was afraid I was ranting)
Click to expand...

Oh no! I eat that sort of thing up! I'm fascinated by the development of the old "ken" (double edged swords) including laminated bronze Chinese swords as well as the old "tou" like the ancient "chokuto" (or "kiriha zukuri" which is a straight blade with that diagonal "Hollywood ninja/tanto" sword tip) and you are correct the curved tachi tou did appear in that era as well as a number of nice decorative mountings. And they did start making laminated blades like the Chinese then so, it is an important era as far as design. I just meant that advances in technology that gave the Japanese sword its renouned cutting ability and the whole "samurai aura" took place after the Heian era (then and for a long time afterwards the bow was their primary weapon). I also read somewhere that the earlier swords were ineffective against the leather armor of the invading mongols (1274?) so they refined the blade and shape to effectively chop right through it by the time of the second invasion in 1281.
 
Yeah, most of the combat-inspired changes took place after the Heian, as far as I know. A few refinements to the shape, varying with the attitude/culture of the times, and, as you said, the development of the shobu zukuri geometry as a counter to the Mongol armor.

Interestingly enough, nihonto seem to have gotten bigger and more flamboyant as internal strife, rather than external invasions, became the primary concern of the samurai. The Nambokucho era swords, for instance.

Really interesting stuff, a lot cooler in reality than in myth.
 
Since you asked:D
This is a test blade I did out of "S5" Shock steel pounded the point thru a piece of 3/16" 1018 steel...dulled the tip some.
Used an 8lb sledge hammer and kept pounding untill my arms gave out.
Did NOT bend the test blade
Have been working with this steel for some time and perfecting the HT process.

I also have a test blade I use to demo when people visit my shop, by whacking chunks out of the side of my vice with a test blade made of the same steel.
Check the link for the testing gallery and pics of a Bali I pounded thru a steel skinned door.
Yes a knife can be made to do that by chopping/pounding it thru
Never get the momemtun needed for a slice
 
kancler said:
Ok! What do you think guys? Can sword cut women's the softest and the lightest flying scarf?
Click to expand...


You're talking about the old claims that wootz blades can cut through a silk scarf with only the pressure of the scarf's weight, right?

I've read accounts that claimed to duplicate that feat with one of the "rediscovered" wootz recipes. Apparently the characteristic hard/soft zone separation in wootz allows for a very fine sawtooth edge. The teeth penetrate the scarf with very little pressure, and the sheer number of micropunctures, combined with the sharpness of the edge, allow the scarf to be separated with only it's own weight acting on the blade.

Apparently the angle at which the edge is held against the scarf is critical.

I have never seen it myself, so it's still a myth to me, but I'd love to see it done.
 
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